UPDATE: Allen holding on to QB secret

Terrelle Pryor was first up when the Raiders broke the huddle and went to the line for their first drill Monday, but coach Dennis Allen declined to name a starting quarterback for the regular-season opener against the Indianapolis Colts.

Note: The San Francisco Chronicle, citing “league sources,” reported Pryor would start against the Colts. The NFL Network reported Raiders players had been told Pryor would start.
“I’m sure all of you have your questions on who the starting quarterback is going to be and what we’re going to do there,’’ Allen said following practice. “I’m really not going to get into that for competitive reasons.

“We’ve got a plan. Unless we start out in the Wildcat we’ll have a quarterback out there the first snap of the game. We’ll just leave it at that.’’

Pryor politely declined comment in the locker room and Matt Flynn was not available for comment.

Flynn, who sat out last week to rest a sore throwing arm, was suited up and was passing during drills.

“I think the (rest) helped him,’’ Allen said. “I don’t anticipate it will be an issue.’’

Allen said he told the quarterbacks who would start, and when asked if he would attempt to keep it a secret up to kickoff in Indianapolis on Sunday, replied, “Before I tell you? Yeah.’’

Whether Pryor starts or not, his ability to use his feet to create plays when the blocking breaks down will get him some playing time in certain situations with a set package of plays.

“We really don’t have a choice about who plays,’’ wide receiver Jacoby Ford said. “We’ll be comfortable with whoever is at the helm.’’

Three have been three examples where Raiders coaches in past years have attempted to fool the opponent regarding the identity of the quarterback, and all three games were losses.

In 2007, rookie coach Lane Kiffin wouldn’t name a starter between Josh McCown and Daunte Culpepper. McCown started, and the Raiders lost 36-21.

In 2010, coach Tom Cable made Bruce Gradkowski the surprise starter, replacing Jason Campbell, and the result was a 33-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins.

After Campbell broke his collarbone in 2011, coach Hue Jackson kept alive the notion that newly acquired Carson Palmer could start against the Kansas Chiefs. Kyle Boller started instead and lasted until halftime of a 28-0 loss.

— Quarterback Tyler Wilson went unclaimed through waivers and the Raiders still have one spot left on their practice squad.

Update: Pryor has since been signed to the practice squad.

“At the end of the day it’s hard to keep four quarterbacks on the 53-man roster and we went through the competitive part of OTAs and minicamp, training camp, and we felt like McGloin was ahead,” Allen said. “Tyler ’s a guy that needs some time to develop but we had to make a decision on what we could take on our 53-man roster right now and we went with Matt McGloin.”

Allen wouldn’t speculate as to whether Wilson would be a possibility for the Raiders practice squad.

— Punter Marquette King simply out-kicked Chris Kluwe and earn the right to replace Shane Lechler as the Raiders punter.

“When you give it your all, you’ve just got to sit back and be patient,’’ King said. “I felt like I gave it my all.’’

Said Allen: “He out-punted him. Marquette won the competition as the punter and we’ll continue to work with the holding situation.’’

King has worked diligently on his holding for place kicks and while Allen will look at other possibilities, the plan is to have King be the holder against Indianapolis.

“I’d get my I-pad and just set it up by the kitchen and just try and be smooth,” King said. “When Justin Medlock came in he really focused on the point of holding, just trying to be smooth from here to there. I’ve been working on being relaxed. As long as your body’s relaxed and you catch a clean snap, you put it down pretty smooth.”

With players unable to practice in the offseason at the facility because of the CBA, King would join long-snapper Jon Condo for workouts in Dublin.

“He worked his butt off this offseason and I’m proud of him,” Condo said. “Now it’s time to go out there and put all that hard work he put in to make it work on Sundays.”

— The Raiders signed veteran tackle Tony Pashos and released Alex Barron. Although he has played almost exclusively on the right side during Pashos becomes the backup for on both the left and right side for Menelik Watson and Khalif Barnes.

Pashos, 33, is a 10-year veteran of five teams. He sat out last season but had 12 starts for Cleveland in 2012. He was released by the Washington Redskins Aug. 31.

“(Barron) wasn’t exactly what we were looking for and we wanted to try and get a veteran player in here, not a young kid that we had to try to develop because this guy’s going to have to go in there and potentially have to play for us,” Allen said.

— Allen said the expected starting offensive line against Indianapolis will be Menelik Watson at left tackle, Lucas Nix at left guard, Stefen Wisniewski at center, Mike Brisiel at right guard and Khalif Barnes at right tackle.

Tracy Porter will start at right cornerback, Allen said, with rookie first-round pick D.J. Hayden coming in to play outside in the nickel, with Porter moving to the slot.

— Three players did not practice Monday _ tight end David Ausberry (shoulder), kicker Sebastian Janikowski (calf) and free safety Usama Young (undisclosed).

Allen said Janikowski will be ready to kick against Indianapolis. Ausberry’s status will be better known Wednesday. If Ausberry is not ready, Jeron Mastrud would get the nod.

— Three uniform number changes Monday _ Mastrud is now No. 85, Porter is No. 23 and Andre Gurode is No. 64.

— Cornerback Chance Casey, wide receiver Greg Jenkins, tight end Brian Leonhardt, guard Lamar Mady and Shelton Johnson, all waived Saturday by the Raiders, were signed to the practice squad.

The Raiders also signed linebacker Marshall McFadden (waived by Pittsburgh) and offensive tackle Matt McCants (waived by the New York Giants.

life’s not fair, yumpin yiminy. say is the swedish guys voice in The Searchers lol.

romania

it’s either way too early or far too late

jumpnjiminy

Anyway, Flynn and Pryor both have proven zippo…get a hungry kid (McGoin) in there and let’s REALLY start rebuilding. Go mad bomber part 2!

jumpnjiminy

Pasted from Yahoo sports piece: “Pryor is a Tim Tebow-like passer with shoddy accuracy. He relies on his natural abilities as a runner to get him out of trouble and help matriculate the ball down the field. Pryor is a lock to struggle against the Colts and any other NFL defense he faces this season. He completed just 17-of-32 passes for 221 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions against vanilla defenses during the preseason. Pryor also took four sacks behind a porous offensive line. If you’re not starting the Indianapolis defense in fantasy leagues, then you’re doing it wrong.

Pryor’s aforementioned running abilities will keep defenses on their toes more than Flynn would have, so that at least gives a bump to Darren McFadden’s fantasy value. It’s still hard to like DMC as more than a low-end RB2 simply because the Raiders are going to be trailing early and often, which in turn means OC Greg Olson will have to dial up pass play after pass play after pass play. The entire offensive crew in Oakland is a fantasy situation to avoid.

It wouldn’t be a total shock to see Flynn get some reps under center as early as the opener. Pryor is nothing more than a back-end QB2.”

Give it a rest. We all know about the deficiencies of these QBs. At this point, Pryor is our best candidate. Flynn is shot confidence wise. McGloin is way to raw, and not very mobile. Wilson is in Siberia on the PS. Get over it and back the guy we got. Because like it or not, Pryor is now the guy.

romania

ah the voice of reason

DIRT-LOT FOOTBALL

DONT FEED ‘EM OAK R8ERS…

guest123

I’m not too worried about the Colts defense. They were nothing stellar in the preseason. Pryor will be able to attack it well. Also, I’m sure we haven’t seen the tip of the iceberg of Olson’s playbook.

Defensively, we got no answer for Andrew Luck. I think the Colts rout us on Sunday. But I think Pryor & company will at least throw 20 points on the board. All the naysayers haven’t seen the offense unleashed yet.

willy91137

5 days until the Indianapolis massacre

pound the rock 11 angry men we will have to bring another kicker in because King have so many times

J Hill

Zymurge Says:
September 3rd, 2013 at 2:10 am

The reason Brady and Manning (and Luck with a bit more seasoning) have time is because they can read what the defense is doing despite the disguises and audible accordingly. They make their OLs better just as much as their OLs make them better.

They are so adept at spotting the blitz and making the hot read to burn the defense where the blitzer vacated that DCs aren’t willing to blitz them often

Despite all the focus on QB, an equally frightening problem is that we can’t run the ball.

Our two guards are horrendous. Bergstrom was supposed to start, and he can’t block at all. Brisiel appears to be not healthy enough to play and Nix is not a starter in this league. We are looking at a lot of 3rd-and-9s, which is the worst possible situation for Pryor.

Indy, 34-10.

RaiderRockstar

from the above article:

“Update: Pryor has since been signed to the practice squad.”

Jerry Mac is a flippin retard

LA to TheBay

I dont’t think we could be any more under the radar. Right where I want us.

MarcusAllen

Pryor is going to be a mixed bag. Defense HAS to step up and prove something. D is almost entirely new group. Scheme and effort better be right or there is zero chance this team gets a win this week. D better step the F up.

RaiderRockstar

Veldheer is top ten LT in the NFL.

Palmer got killed last year

***

the 2 most ignorant statements of the night.

No & No

RaiderRockstar

on hold with the dentist office.. listening to One Direction

ugh!

theghostronin79

Pretty good prediction Guest…. I’d imagine the game shaking out that way too.

I think Pryor will move the team, and they will score. I think he finds a rhythm late, and starts engineering a comeback, but it will be too little, too late.

Our Defense isn’t stopping SH*T….. What’s the over under on how many “Punts” we force? 2?

I’d go with the under.

ElkGRaider

I dont’t think we could be any more under the radar. Right where I want us.
—————

Never in my life have I seen a team given so much doom and gloom. Schedule isn’t that tough and the division sucks. Anything can happen…

willy91137

Preseason does not mean anything we will look different than any time in the preseason
Indy has a very fast defense it will not be pretty but everybody is saying prior to starting except the Raiders
it will be fun to see our new defense with all the new wrinkles in the offense with the Wildcats soprano love Wild cat are defense will go from the 43 to 34 let’s hope we can get in the quarterbacks face if we can do that we could win

and stop their run you have to make a team one dimensional

Macho Man Randy Savage

Yahoo sports reads what other write and refries. We can beat the Colts if our D steps up. I liked Walker and Sims playing together t DT. I really think our DBs are top notch.

Keep em under 20 and Pryor gives us a comeback on the 4th qtr.

Raiders 20 Indi 17.

DJ Johnny

OakR8rs says:

“This is at least a little bit Flynn’s fault. A lesson he apparently didn’t learn in Seattle. He, best as I could tell from reading, never took control of this team. He never became the vocal leader on the field or even in the huddle that he needed to be. Guys like Brady and Manning can afford to lead by example, and they still don’t. We have a bunch of children on this team. They need to be led on the field. Pryor is a leader. We saw that in the San Diego game. He just seems, on the surface anyway, to want it more than Flynn. And to be willing to put himself out there more than Flynn.

There is a reason Flynn is getting booed. It’s not JUST because people want to see Pryor play. I can name about 20 QBs that wouldn’t get the same welcome as Flynn, maybe more. Flynn brought this on himself. He’s not a leader. He’s not vocal. He’s not willing to put himself out there. He’s not a starting NFL QB.”
—
…which is concerning that Reggie would bring him here to be “the man” in the first place.

We need to get through this year and re-sign the good players on this team

draft a franchise quarterback trade prior for draft picks draft a wide receiver in the second round

3 and 4 round pick on offense of one or two big strong guards

start Tyler Wilson in a game and show what he’s got and see if you can get some draft picks for him

next year will be our year we will have our own offensive line sorted out

and are defense of line as well if Bridgwater is our quarterback he throws a very accurate ball naturally and throws the deep ball extremely well
team start playing their safeties so deep Louisville starts running on them

hope he can do that in the pros Bridgwater’s biggest strength is his accuracy

Charlie

I am glad we will be giving Pryor a shot.

Flynn is still very important to us this season.

First, we still do not know how Pryor will evolve over the season. If he gets better as the season goes along, great. What if he starts to implode and his performance declines?

Second, many on the blog seem to ignore the possibility of injury. It happened on the Oline this season and could happen to Pryor.

Third, does anyone really feel comfortable giving the team over to McGloin????? If the answer is yes,did’t you see enough of that with Bollar?

This season will give much more clarity to our QB situation. Till then, Pryor starts with a good chance we will need Flynn during this season.

Charlie

Willy

See my 1197 post regarding QB.

Getting a “franchise” QB in the draft would depend alot on how Pryor does this year.

Without a good Oline in front of the “franchise”, he will not be on the field long.

willy91137

if we get our offense of lines sorted out then it is a good time to draft a franchise quarterback

nothing worse than bringing in a franchise quarterback and have no offensive line

give the kid the first shot whoever we draft him sure that’s on Reggie’s mind

we will be ready for a franchise quarterback by this time next year and there’s some real good ones that are coming out

bcz24

The Legend gets the nod for Sunday, rightfully so. He earned it. Hopefully he plays as well as he did in my recent Madden 25 game against the Colts (195 yards rushing, 3 TDs, 200 yards passing 3 TD’s)LOL. I do feel for him, as he has arguably the worst WR/TE core in the NFL. He isn’t going to get bailed out by the position group.

Did someone earlier actually say let Veldheer walk in favor of Watson? Did your ‘Jump to Conclusions’ mat tell you that? Even IF Watson turned out to be BETTER than Hulk, why let him walk? We have already proven the value of OLine depth. By the way, Watson gets his baptism by fire this week… squaring off with Robert Mathis.

Tony Pashos could start at RT, he will push Barnes. Dude is pretty good, surprised he ended up on Waivers.
Antoine McClain will likely push Brisiel back to the bench as well. Gurode only made the team to back up little Wiz, he was terrible at guard.

Big gaffe by Reggie losing David Bass, he may not have been much this year, but you lost a promising young DLineman by trying to trade a punter? Who the fvck is going to trade a PUNTER that is definitely getting cut by the end of the week anyways? As much as I have tried and tried to defend Reggie… not sure there are many more WTF head scratching decisions I can handle.

That’s all for the moment. Who knows how long I will be able to log in for. Had to get as much out as I could think of.